If you are heading to the Magic Kingdom soon, you might want to consider booking the Festival of Fantasy Dining Package.
This experience not only gives you a chance to take a break and enjoy a meal at Tony’s Town Square Restaurant on Main Street, but also provides you with front row VIP viewing for the afternoon Disney Festival of Fantasy Parade.
Your experience begins with a dining reservation at Tony’s Town Square Restaurant. Our reservation was for 11:45 a.m., which was a tricky time. If I were booking this again, I would make the reservation later (probably around 1:30 p.m.) so that I could go directly from lunch to the parade. With our 11:45 a.m. time, we spent most of our morning trying to get up and down Main Street. (The train was closed for refurbishment during our stay; if it had been operational that might have made things a bit easier.)
Tony’s Town Square Restaurant is located on Main Street just inside the entrance to the Magic Kingdom. The restaurant is themed after the famous restaurant and spaghetti scene in the movie Lady and the Tramp. The movie is playing in the waiting area to entertain children while they wait to be seated.
There is a lovely fountain in the center of the restaurant, and the walls are decorated with scenes from the movie.
With our reservation we waited about 10 minutes to be seated, just enough time to use the restroom and for the kids to enjoy the movie. While you are waiting, you might wish to pass your autograph book along to the hostess. If she isn’t busy, she can take it out back to see if Lady and Tramp are around and could sign it for you.
Guests with the Disney Dining Plan or the Deluxe Dining Plan can book this experience using one table service credit. If you have the quick service dining plan or are paying out of pocket, you can expect to pay around $45 for adults and $17 for children over the age of 3. Children under 3 are free if they are sharing your meal, but will need to pay $17 to order their own meals.
Portions are large. My 2-year-old shared off of our plates, and we still couldn’t finish all of the food. As is true with most meals, dessert was our favorite part.
The meals included an appetizer, entree, dessert, and a drink. Most of the typical Italian menu revolved around pastas and breads, and there was a nice variety to choose from. Both the kid and adult menus included the famous spaghetti and meatballs. I selected a vegetable primivera with shrimp, and received a generous amount of yummy vegetables with my pasta. My daughter selected a personal cheese pizza, and still couldn’t finish it all even with help from her brother.
Once we were done with our meal, our waitress provided us with our tickets for VIP seating for the Festival of Fantasy parade. We played on Main Street for a while until it was time for the parade. They recommended that we arrive 15 – 35 minutes before the parade started at 3:00 p.m. Because the seating area is at the end of the parade route, the parade didn’t actually get to us until about 3:15 p.m.
Seating was around the flagpole facing the castle, so we had amazing seats to watch the parade come right down Main Street towards us.
The view was incredible; by far the best I have ever had for a parade. I would absolutely take advantage of this opportunity again the next time I visit the Magic Kingdom.
You can book your reservation for the Disney Festival of Fantasy Parade Dining Package through My Disney Experience or by calling (407)WDW-DINE.
Have you done the Festival of Fantasy Dining Package? What were your thoughts? Share them in the comments.
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How long did lunch take? I had this booked already and now they changed the time of the parade
So I did this package in March 2017 and while it was nice, I don’t think its worth it unless you have table service credits to spare.
I was expecting the food to be horrible based on previous reviews but it was pretty decent! Appetizer and desserts were included with our credit and we got the fried zucchini fries, which were pretty yummy with the dip.
For our meals my son got the pizza and I got the chicken parmigiana. Both we’re decent! The brownie and strawberry cheese cake were our dessert choice and both were delicious but tiny. Good food overall.
So I decided to do lunch there at 1:45 since the parade started at 3:15 and wanted to give myself some time to eat and get a seat at least 30 min before it started. The wait was long to get seated even with the reservation (20 min which is the longest I waited for any reservation the whole trip). But the service was great and I think our server knew we didn’t want to linger so he gave us everything we needed including to go drinks and our parade tickets at the end of our meal pretty fast.
Now we literally walked across the street to the flag pole round where the VIP section was about 35 minutes before the parade. Stitch was still out there meeting people and there were no seats, just a couple of ropes being put up. I had to ask someone who I need to show my tickets to and they just kind of shrugged and said they’ll collect them before the parade starts. We were the first few there I guess, so I just decided to sit at the edge of the sidewalk on the round looking dead center down Mainstreet. I asked if this was ok and a CM said yes, I got the perfect spot. Didn’t seem very organized since there were people milling around in the section until about 5 min before the parade started and they started checking tickets and kicking people out.
The parade started and while we seemed to have the “perfect spot”, the advantage of looking at it dead on coming towards us was really only beneficial for the first float. And you would think that being in the VIP we’d get more attention from the performers, more waves, or some kind of extra magic for us. Nope! We pretty much got the same attention as the rest of the crowd. Only one performer (a winged creature thing) came close to acknowledged my son who was eagerly calling out to everyone.
The floats go all the way around the the flag pole area which you think would be nice, but really made it more distracting since we were getting different kinds of music and what not from all sides.
The worst part was even though the parade was over they kept us hostage in that section for 5 minutes or so after the last float passed. We were then bombarded with the rest of crowd so we almost missed our next fast pass.
Over all it was an okay experience. I would definitely not go out of my way to do this ever again and would only consider it if I had some extra table credits I needed to use.
My autistic son is a crazy Disney kiddo and has this parade memorized. We are considering this pkg primarily for the vip seating in a few weeks, mixed reviews in the comments do you think these sests are worth the $50 meal tix?